I don't think of my characters as people I create, I think of them more as people I have met and whom I'm exploring on the page. I don't actually think of myself as having 'created' any of these people.

Hope is good. Without it, well, you do the math. But hope has to be like a prayer. Putting it out there to something more powerful than yourself.

Others of us are lost. We're forever seeking. We torture ourselves with philosophies and ache to see the world. We question everything, even our own existence. We ask a lifetime of questions and are never satisfied with the answers because we don't recognize anyone as an authority to give them. We see life and the world as an enormous puzzle that we might never understand, that our questions might go unanswered until the day we die, almost never occurs to us. And when it does, it fills us with dread.

Judgment is such a useful shield, isn't it? We can hide behind it, rise above others on its crest, keep ourselves safe and separate.

The truth has not so much set us free as it has ripped away a carefully constructed facade, leaving us naked to begin again.

There's nothing particularly dark in my past... I live in the light. My disposition is basically happy. I have a good life.

Denial: my family heritage. If you don't ask the questions, the truth will never inconvenience you.